Congratulations to our current graduate and undergraduate students and alumni who have received prestigious 2025 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships (GRFP) and Honorable Mentions.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support including an annual stipend and a cost of education allowance to the institution.
2025 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships (GRFP) were awarded to current graduate students Allison Clark (Garg) and Miguel Reyna (Tolbert); undergraduates Kyle Nagasawa (Tang, headed to the Scripps Research Institute this fall), and Daniel Francisco Torres Pomares (Spokoyny, headed to the University of California, San Francisco, in the fall); and alumnus John Cao ’24 (Caram, headed to Manhattan, NY, in the fall to join the Tri-Institutional Ph.D. Program in Chemical Biology).
2025 Honorable Mentions by NSF, also a significant national academic achievement, were accorded to current graduate students: Shareen Ashby (Barber), Kylie Cheng (Clubb), Cameron Flowers (Rodriguez/Loo), Morgan Grimes (Lawson), Samuel Hugie (Doyle), Ferdawss Ihiri (Alexandrova/Garcia-Garibay), Benjamin Janda (Garg), Hugh Knopp (Braybrook), Mei Matsumoto (Spokoyny), Marcella Mirabelli, Giulianna Miseo (Garg), Maggie Polite (Maynard), Christina Rivera (Garg), and Tiffany Robinson (Schmitt).
Undergraduate students Giselle Brown (Doyle, headed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the fall), Tim Duong (Neuhauser/Caram), and Nilya Moushiabad (Barber, headed to the University of California, Davis, in the fall) also received Honorable Mentions.
Also receiving Honorable Mentions are former undergraduate researchers Elaine Chao ’23 (Houk/Maynard), now a graduate student at Columbia University; Abigail Chapman ‘23 (Gelbart/Knobler), now a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Audrey Nashner ’23 (Andrews), now a graduate student at Northwestern University.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penjen@g.ucla.edu.
